Netflix’s latest star Ryan O’Connell is determined to improve gay representation on TV and that means more accurate portrayals of gay sex.
The creator/writer/actor tackled the issue head-on in his new series Special (read our review here!) with an extremely intimate sex scene between his character Ryan and a kind male sex worker. In an interview with Vulture, he said,
“I am so frustrated by the lack of representation of gay sex in TV and film, like in Call Me by Your Name when they panned away to the moon. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? This movie has more straight sex and more fruit sex than actual gay sex. You’re blue-balling us the entire film, and then they fuck and you turn away? Go fuck yourself. Like, seriously.”
He added,
“I want to bring gay sex to the forefront in a very accurate, human way. And so I knew with this sex scene, there wasn’t gonna be no panning away to the fuckin’ moon! We were gonna see how gay sex is done. I wanted it to feel real. In season two, ideally, I wanna show a lot more gay sex. It will all have to serve the story, but I wanna normalize gay sex.”
The show has yet to officially be renewed for another season but based on the hype and positive reviews of the first season, there’s no reason Special shouldn’t get a season 2. And if they do renew, they better make those episodes a bit longer (15 minutes is way too short!). As Ryan says, “mama wants a half hour!”
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